


The Finite Boundaries of the Heart

by shiniestqueen (sparrowinsky)



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 00:11:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowinsky/pseuds/shiniestqueen
Summary: After the curse is broken, Belle tries to come to terms with a Prince in place of her Beast.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eida/gifts).



In the first hours, the first days, the first weeks, everything is almost the same. The Beast is-- no, Adam. Adam is always with her, beside her, dressed in hastily-sewn tunics and fragile smiles. The servants are whole and human again, and if it disconcerts Belle to see Lumiere and Cogsworth argue in flesh instead of wood and metal, if sometimes she reaches absentmindedly toward Madame de la Grande Bouche before she recalls there are no wardrobe doors to open, that she reaches for a person now… 

Well. That is a fault in Belle, not in them. 

The thought holds no comfort for her, not when Adam is silent and still and shadows linger beneath his eyes. Belle shouldn’t stay in the castle, not now, even though-- or perhaps especially because-- they are to be married. Belle is to be a princess. The thought is less pleasing than she might have expected. When she imagines her marriage bed fur lingers beneath her fingers instead of golden hair. 

Of course, she should not imagine it at all. That’s not proper, she has read. There are ways of doing things. A woman may daydream of her marriage, but not what lies beyond, unless it be children. A woman does not linger in her betrothed’s near-empty castle for weeks. A woman ought not to be less comfortable with every dignitary that arrives before her wedding, but Belle is. She is lonely and nervous and the library is not the calming idyll it once was. Not with Adam hovering at her side.

It’s not a name fit for a prince.  _ Adam _ . It sounds like someone she might encounter at the bread-shop, not a man who rules a principality. Will rule. Perhaps. 

It has been ten years, after all. No one is yet clear on what the Beast-- what Adam does or does not own. Adam himself has no words on the matter. Adam himself has few words at all, fewer than the Beast had. Those that do come are soft, tentative. 

_ Wrong. _

The last of the nobles trickle into the castle in the week before the wedding, and Belle is hiding in the library, but even the buffer of books can’t keep her nerves from cutting into her thoughts like a hot blade. For an hour at least she’s stared blindly at the same page, her mind wandering. 

She closes the book in her hand with a  _ snap _ , and beside her Adam startles.

“Belle?” That soft voice again. Belle swallows rage and forces herself to look at him. 

“I’m tired, Adam,” she responds quietly. He opens his mouth and she cuts him off before he can offer to walk her to her room. “I’m tired of this-- this-- of-- you!”

His blue eyes go slowly wide, mouth working as he takes in her words. The book slips from Belle’s fingers and she reaches for him, instantly contrite. She moves too slowly. Before her hand can brush his shirt Adam is across the room, palms flat on the window and staring into the gardens.

The silence hovers between them, growing thicker. With every passing moment it’s as if the threads of worry and frustration twist themselves into a rope, impossible to sever. Belle doesn’t have the tools.

_ I didn’t mean it _ , she aches to say, but she did.

* * *

 

“No, Comte de Comeau, I believe Prince Adam is of the same mind.” Belle hoped her smile looked more honest than it felt. No small part of her wanted to bare her teeth like the Beast at the simpering noble beside her. 

“Ah, you have him wrapped around your beautiful fingers already, mademoiselle,” the man replied with a smirk, making as if to bring her hand to his lips. Belle had been willing to walk arm-in-arm with him through the garden out of politeness, but this was too much. She jerked her hand away with more speed than grace and stepped back, her smile falling away and her eyes growing cold. 

“I feel ill,” she lied, not caring how hollow it sounded. “Thank you for the lovely walk, Comte. I’m sure you can find your way back to the castle.”

She fled before he could do more than sputter a startled acquiescence. Veering left took her to a servant’s entrance, one that would allow her to make her way to the kitchens. That, at least, was a place none of the arrogant, empty-headed people currently filling her home would bother going.

“Something the matter, dear?” Mrs. Potts broke off from her murmured discussion with Chef Bouche as Belle pushed open the wooden door. Her soft voice wrapped around Belle like a welcoming blanket.

“I hate this,” Belle said without preamble. She flung herself into a chair at the kitchen table, ignoring the puff of flour that dusted up as she dropped her head to the smooth surface. “Half of them are nearly as bad as--” she swallowed, going pale. When she spoke again her voice was soft and tight. “--as Gaston. They think I’m a fool. Everything I say has to have ‘ _ Prince Adam thinks… _ ’ before it or they’ll all but laugh in my face!” She took a deep breath, feeling her throat go tight. “It was bad enough when Adam would talk to them, but-- oh, I was awful, Mrs. Potts. I said a terrible thing to him a few days ago.”

“Well, you could apologize, couldn’t you, love?” Mrs. Potts reached across the table to pat Belle’s hair gently, and from the corner of her eye Belle could see the chef rise from his chair and step toward the stove.

“I can’t lie to him,” Belle mumbled into her elbow. “I told him the truth, and it was awful, and I won’t take it back. I miss--”

Something hot and damp struck her skin. Belle realized with a start that she was crying. She pushed herself upright, helpless to stop the tears that spilled over her cheeks even as she took the teacup Chef Bouche pushed into her hands. Still crying and her lip trembling, Belle stared at Mrs. Potts.

“I miss the Beast.”

* * *

 

Her wedding day was strange. 

Or perhaps it wasn’t. Little enough of it lingered in her mind after the fact. The day had been unusually cold for the time of year. Her dress had been achingly beautiful, the sky-blue satin trimmed in white hugging close to her figure. And roses. Roses everywhere, red and white: the garden a riot of them, the bower twined with so many blooms she could hardly breathe.

And now…

Belle forced her glance away from the window. The revelers still danced and laughed and drank in the garden. She would hardly claim to envy them, but watching them had at least postponed the inevitable. 

Adam still sat on the bed, his large frame small against the massive wooden posters that held up a new canopy. He’d made no move toward her, made no sound at all until she moved away from the window to sit beside him.

“Strange, isn’t it,” he murmured, voice far lighter than she expected even after all these long weeks. “You fell in love with a Beast and he with you, and now here we are: two strangers, wedded.” He coughed. From the corner of her eye Belle saw his cheeks flush pink. “I won’t bed you, Belle. I’m not what I-- who I was.”

Some wayward thought snagged in Belle’s mind, a strange urge to prod this new beast as she had the old one. “You have every right to. I’m your wife.”

For a moment his only response was a shiver. When he spoke again his voice was lower, some hint of familiar roughness coloring his words. “I will  _ not _ force you, Belle.”

“No,” she replied softly. “I… I hadn’t thought to ask how you feel. Now that you’re different, I mean.”

“Different.” The smile he aimed at her was small and crooked, but for the first time since the night of his change, it didn’t seem likely to shatter. “Lost, I suppose. I always thought everything was terribly wrong, when I was…  _ him _ . And now… is it strange to say, Belle? I miss it. I miss myself. I don’t even know who I am.”

Belle reached for him slowly. When he didn’t pull away, she laid her hand atop his and tangled their fingers together, noticing how much warmer his skin was. Like the Beast’s had been. “I don’t know you either. I think, though… that I might like to.” After a moment she turned her head and met his eyes. His smile had grown, still anxious at the edges but softened by the humour and affection in his eyes.

“Well, then,” Adam said softly, shifting his hand to grip hers palm-to-palm. “Hello, it’s lovely to meet you. My name is Adam.”

Giggles spilled out of her, abrupt and unbidden. “My name is Belle, and I’m pleased to meet you as well.” She shook his hand as if they were merchant and customer agreeing to a deal. “Everyone’s still outside or downstairs, I think. I’m not tired, but I don’t want to go back out, either. People would talk.”

“People always talk,” he said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. For a moment Belle felt as though she saw the Prince who’d opened his door to an old woman and sent her away. Then he leaned in toward her and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “But I’ve got a library no one will be in.”

Belle smiled as a memory came to the fore, of stepping into the library behind the Beast, his face grumpily nervous as he watched her take it in.  _ Maybe _ , she thought as she let Adam pull her to her feet and toward the door,  _ there’s a little of the Beast in him as well _ .

Adam, the Prince, and the Beast. If she could break a curse, surely it was no harder to get to know them all. He was her husband, after all.

“Adam.” She barely breathed his name as she followed him down the hall, one hand in his and the other holding up her bulky skirts. He paused immediately, turning back to her with the bright blue eyes that she’d once thought held nothing but barely-banked rage. Even in the dim light of the hall they seemed to shine. When she spoke no further he stepped close and smiled down at her. 

“Belle,” he said teasingly. “Come on, I don’t want Cogsworth to catch us.” 

She laughed and followed as he took off again, tripping after him on stockinged feet, and something in her heart unbent. For weeks Belle had thought she’d spent her love, given it all to a shattered curse and a Beast. The flutter beneath her breastbone now was no torrent, nothing like the desperation and love that had sent her running to the Beast’s side through the rain. It was quiet, a trickle, no more. 

Still.

It was there. An ember beneath the ashes of a castle, but an ember nonetheless, and if the Beast had taught her nothing else, it was that the smallest touch of friendship could grow into so much more. And Belle would be there watching it, protecting it, feeding the flames with Adam by her side.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, hope you enjoy it! :)


End file.
